Prisoners, Their Rights and Reformation

International Journal of Engineering and Management Research e-ISSN: 2250-0758 | p-ISSN: 2394-6962
Volume- 9, Issue- 4 (August 2019)
www.ijemr.net https://doi.org/10.31033/ijemr.9.4.1
1 This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Prisoners, Their Rights and Reformation
Shama Nargis
Civil Judge (Senior Division), Uttarakhand Judicial Services, INDIA
Corresponding Author: noorul.du@gmail.com
"Instead of making prisoners out of our students, we ought to make students out of our prisoners."
ABSTRACT
The prisons in India, which are often called as
correctional institutes, are more or less being occupied by a
very high numbers, much higher than the sanctioned
capacity. Consequent upon this, the focus of reformation
activities are been diverted. This paper attempts to bring
about the right of the prisoners, where focus needs to be
established, and also highlights the reformative exercise
which could be incorporated in the present administrative
setup of the prison.
Keywords-- Rehabilitation, Correctional Administration,
Under Trials, Incarceration, Model Manual of Prison
Administration
Definition
The word Prison‟ connotes its derivation from
the Latin words and means “seize‟ and “cage‟. The
English Dictionary[1] defines prison as “A building in
which people are legally held as a punishment for a
crime they have committed or while awaiting trial."
Prison Includes:-
(i) any place which has been declared by the State
Government, by general or special order, to be a
subsidiary jail;
or
(ii) any reformatory, borstal institution or other
institutions of a like nature.[2]
The term prison is often used in different forms
such as Penitentiary, jail, detention centre, remand
centre, correctional facility etc.
I. INTRODUCTION
Indian prisons are now crammed with prisoners.
In many jails they are so over-crowded that the amenities
designed for a far less number of inmates are now being
shared by disproportionately large number of internees
therein, e.g., as per the data[3] in the jails of U.P, there
are 95336 prisoners as against the intake capacity of
58111, showing an occupancy rate of 164.10%. In
Delhi, its 14058 against the intake capacity of 7818, and
thus has179.80 % occupancy rate. This overcrowding of
prisons is threat to the facility to be provided and also
hampers the administrative set up to a greater extent.
II. OBJECTIVE AND RESEARCH
METHODOLOGY
The paper is mainly concerned with the right of
the prisoners, and their rehabilitation. For this, mostly
secondary data has been analysed and jotted down so as
to provide the shape to the objective. Data has been taken
from the internet, material available on the Ministries
website, NCRB, BPRD etc.
III. ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
There are principally two categories of prisoner:
(1) under-trial prisoners, and
(2) convicted prisoners (Besides them there are those
detained as preventive measure, and those undergoing
detention for default of payment of fine).
Those in the first category cannot be required to
do any labour while they remain in jail, but they far
outnumber all the remain categories put together.
Statistics show that in most of the States, the under-trial
prisoners have over-whelming majority when compared
with the number of convicted prisoners
Jail authorities are enjoined by law to impose
hard labour on a particular section of the convicted
prisoners who were sentenced to rigorous imprisonment.
Section 53 of the Indian Penal Code which falls under
the Chapter entitled "of Punishment" describe
punishments into five categories, of which the category
"imprisonment" has been further sub-divided into two
sub-categories as "rigorous" and "simple". Rigorous
imprisonment is explained as "imprisonment with hard
labour".
Section 60 of the Indian Penal Code confers
power on a sentencing Court to direct that "such
imprisonment shall be wholly rigorous or that such
imprisonment shall be wholly simple, or that any part of
such imprisonment shall be rigorous and the rest simple."
The sentence of "imprisonment for life" tagged along
with a number of offences delineated in the Indian Penal
Code is interpreted as "rigorous imprisonment for life"
and not simple imprisonment.
IV. RIGHTS OF THE PRISONERS
RECOGNIZED BY HON'BLE SUPREME
COURT

1. Reading and Writing Books in Jail:
In State Of Maharashtra vs Prabhakar
Pandurang Sangzgirir[4] Art. 21 of the constitution was
made available perhaps for the first time to a prisoner
while dealing with the question of his right of reading and
writing books while in Jail.
2. Liberal use of Parole:
The Government or any authority which the
State Government may declare its powers on this
behalf, may on recommendation of the District Parole
Board direct that a prisoner may be specified in the
direction, for any period not exceeding thirty days at a
time excluding time required for journeys and the days of
departure from, and the arrival Suresh Chandra Vs. State
of Gujarat 1976 SCC, The Hon'ble Supreme Court while
stating about penalogical innovation in the Slope of
Parole to check recidivism because of which liberal use
of the same was recommended.
3. Segregation of Prisoners:
A challenge was made to segregation of
prisoners a three Judge bench of the Hon'ble
Supreme court stated that resort to oppressive measures
to curb political beliefs (the prisoner was naxalite because
of which he was put in a "quarantine" and subjected to
inhuman treatment) could not be permitted. In B.M
Pattnaik v. State of A.P.[5] The court however, opined
that a prisoner could not complain of installation of high-
violative wire mechanism on the jail walls to prevent
escape from prisons, as no prisoner had fundamental right
to escape from lawful custody.
V. INTERNATIONAL RULES OF
PRISONERS WELFARE
The Bangkok Rules[6]
It is known that the Standard Minimum Rules,
which has been framed for the Treatment of Prisoners
applies to all prisoners without discrimination however,
the attention towards the women prisoners has been
pending since a long time. With the increase in the
number of women prisoners all over the world, it was the
need to bring this issue and provide more comprehensive
document so as to provide standardised rules for women
prisoners in the jails. The General Assembly of the
United Nation, in December, 2010, framed the rules
called as "The United Nations Rules for the Treatment
of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for
Women Offenders" popularly called as Bangkok Rules.
These rules incorporate a variety of measures for
treatment of women prisoners related to admission,
personal hygiene, medical services, preventive health care
services, safety and security etc.
The Nelson Mandela Rules[7]
Although, there existed rules for the
maintenance of standards in respect of treatment of
prisoners all over the world, the UN General Assembly,
in 2015, adopted the Revised rules called as “United
Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of
Prisoners” to honour the late President of South Africa,
Nelson Mandela, who had spend 27 years in prison in the
course of his struggle for global human rights.
Some of the rules mentioned under "The Nelson
Mandela Rules 2015" are as follows:-
a. All prisoners shall be treated with the respect due to
their inherent dignity and value as human beings.
b. No prisoner shall be subjected to, and all prisoners
shall be protected from torture and other cruel, inhuman
or degrading treatment or punishment, for which no
circumstances whatsoever may be invoked as a
justification.
c. There shall be no discrimination on the grounds of
race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other
opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or any
other status. The religious beliefs and moral precepts of
prisoners shall be respected
d. Prison administrations and other competent authorities
should offer education, vocational training and work, as
well as other forms of assistance that are appropriate and
available, including those of a remedial, moral, spiritual,
social and health- and sports-based nature.
It highlights some of the important aspects of
inmates and provides direction for their welfare:
Covering various modalities in the prison administration,
these rules have been carved out to ensure that the
inmates are safe, secure and not subjected to any kind of
decimation, while development of education and
imparting skills is other part of this declaration.
VI. POSITION IN INDIA
The situation in the prisons is quite varied and
complex. The most important issues and challenges faced
in prisons are:
a) Over crowding
b) Classification & Segregation
c) Inadequate facilities for prisoners
d) Scarcity of places for drying clothes and keeping
personal belongings
e) Threat to medical facility and preventive health
care service
f) Problem related to Food, laundry services etc
If we see the data as on 31.12.2016, of NCRB[8] in
respect of inmates all over the country, the following
needs to be observed:

Sr. no No. of Prisons
(States and UTs)
Available Capacity (Both
Male and Female inmates) in
States & UTs
Inmate Population
(Both Male and
Female)
in States & UTs
Occupancy Rate
1 1412 380876 433003 113.7%
(Over crowded)
VII. PRISON ADMINISTRATION vis- a -
vis JUDICIAL INTERVENTION
The Supreme Court of India had to come
strongly in favour of judicial scrutiny and intervention
whenever the rights of prisoners in detention or custody
were found to have been infringed upon. In Sunil Batra
v. Delhi Administration and Others[9], Mr. Justice V.
R. Krishna Iyer[10] pronounced: “prisoners have
enforceable liberties, devalued may be but not
demonetised; and under our basic scheme, Prison Power
must bow before Judge Power, if fundamental freedoms
are in jeopardy”.
In Sunil Batra v. Delhi Administration[11],
again, the Court asked and affirmed: “Are prisoners’
persons? Yes, of course. To answer in the negative is to
convict the nation and the Constitution of dehumanisation
and to repudiate the world legal order, which now
recognises rights of prisoners in the International
Covenant on Prisoners’ Rights to which our country has
signed assent”.
In a number of judgements on various issues
related to prison administration, the Apex Court of India
has laid down three broad principles
(i) A person in prison does not become a non-
person
(ii) A person in prison is entitled to all human
rights within the limitations of
imprisonment
(iii) There is no justification in aggravating the
suffering already inherent in the process of
incarceration.
The Following were Highlighted in the Said Case:
“It is imperative, as implicit in article 21, that
life or liberty shall not be kept in suspended animation or
congealed into animal existence without the freshening
flow of fair procedure. Fair procedure in dealing with the
prisoners calls for another dimension of access of law-
provision, within the easy reach of the law which limits
liberty to persons who are prevented from moving out of
prison gates”.
“No prisoner can be personally subjected to
deprivation not necessitated by the fact of incarceration
and the sentence of court. All other freedoms belong to
him – to read and write, exercise and recreation,
meditation and chant, creative comforts like protection
from extreme cold and heat, freedom from indignities like
compulsory nudity, forced sodomy and other unbearable
vulgarity, movement within the prison campus subject to
requirements of discipline and security, the minimum joys
of self-expression, to acquire skills and techniques and all
other fundamental rights tailored to the limitations of
imprisonment”.
The Supreme Court of India strongly felt that
there is the need for bringing in a basic uniformity in laws
and regulations governing different prisons in the
country. The apex Court has specifically issued
directions to various authorities to deliberate about
enacting of new Prison Act to replace the century old
Prisons Act, 1894 and to examine the question of framing
of a new model All India Jail Manual.
In Shri Rama Murthy vs State Of
Karnataka[12] the apex court dealt with the problems
of overcrowding, torture and ill-treatment, neglect of
health and hygiene, insubstantial food and inadequate
clothing, deficiency in communication streamlining of
jails visits, management of open air prisons and delay in
trials of inmates in the prisons. The Hon'ble Supreme
Court issued directions to the States, the Union
Territories and to the Central Government as to why they
should not act on the causes detailed in the judgment.
Reformative and Rehabilitation Activities:
Now a day’s imprisonment does not mean to
break the stones or grind the Chakkies but the sense has
changed. Prisoners are given full chance to reform and
rehabilitate themselves during the period of
imprisonment. Tihar Jail which is the largest complex of
the Asian Jails, adopted the many reformative and
rehabilitative steps.
(a) Facilities Provided under the Jail: Now the days
have gone when the prisoners were given hard
punishment in the jail. Now, they are treated as
human beings and being provided many facilities. Some
activities for prisoners are re-creations, sports, Yoga,
Meditation, adult education, library, computers
learning facility, vocational training, embroidery and
sewing etc. In female ward, educational classes are held
for various courses of Indira Gnadhi National Open
University and National Open School facilitating
various courses like M.B.A., M.A., B.A. Courses and
their school Courses. Teaching classes are taken by
professional teachers as well as qualified and educated
prisoners. Other facilities in the jail are necessary
bedding, bed- sheet, durries, blankets & equipments
like plate, glass etc. are provided to all prisoners from jail
concerned. Break-fast, food(twice), tea (twice) and safe
drinking water are provided.
(b) Treatment of the Offenders: In jail premises for the
treatment of prisoners various techniques are used
which helps prisoners to rehabilitate.

(i) Yoga and Meditation:
For cleansing and disciplining mind. Yoga and
meditation classes were started in a big way with the help
of various Voluntary organization. In the year 1999 Tihar
jail created a history by organizing a Vipasana
meditation camp for more than one thousand prisoners.
Since then a permanent Vipasana Centre has been opened
in Tihar Jail No 4. where two courses of 10 days duration
are organized regularly. In the year 1998 Shri Satya
Narain Goenka Teacher of Vipasana inaugurated
"pagodas" Meditation cells in the Centre. Staff members
are also encouraged to attend meditation courses.
Meditation group like Brahma Kumari, Ishwariya,
Vishva-vidhalya, Divya Jyoti, Jagriti Sansthan,
Sahaj Yoga kendra have also opened their branches in
jails for imparting moral education, counseling and
techniques of meditation to the prisoners. This has helped
many prisoners in changing the whole approach to life.
(ii) Creative Art Therapy:
Creative Art Therapy, which is
physiotherapeutic in nature, is used in severe
setting. In respect to prison setting, the therapy
serves as reformatory process in several ways. First and
most important, it helps to express, channelize and
ventilate himself. One has to keep in mind that, anyone
convicted or otherwise exiled from the rest of the world is
initially bound to have tremendous anger, aggression,
sense of helplessness, hopelessness and emotional
problems. Therefore, by encouraging and promoting
creative Art, the individual is able to pent up emotions
and realize his worth as "self" having a positive desire of
improving himself both consciously and unconsciously.
(iii) Social Participation in Reformation:
As a part of community participation in
the reformation and social integration of prisoners after
release, a large number of respectable members of non-
governmental organizations, Retired Major General,
Professors I.I.T., Delhi Eminent Psychiatrist,
Psychologists, Principle and teachers of various
educational institutions have been conducting various
activities in the prisons. These NGOs have had very
sobering and positive impact on the psyche of the
prisoners, who have been shown the positive and
constructive approach to life after interaction with them.
(iv) Rehabilitation:
In addition a programme for teaching various
trades was started in other Jails also both for
convicts as well as under trails. This programme includes
pen manufacturing, book binding, manure making, screen
printing, envelop making, tailoring and cutting, shoe
making etc. Which has not only resulted in learning a
trade, but also provided monetary gains to the prisoners.
For the post-release rehabilitation of the Prisoners, the
social welfare Department of Delhi Government provides
loans for setting up self-employed units.
(v) Factories in Jails:
Generally now a days there are many factories in
the Jails i.e. weaving, carpentry, chemical (shop, oil, etc.)
paper, tailoring, bakery etc which helps the person in
getting the rehabilitation after release from the jail after
the completion of sentence. There has been 1000% grown
in the turnover of the Tihar jail factory within last two
years. With the close participation of convicts and the jail
staff and the NGOs they are producing articles under the
brand name of “TJ” with products ranging from branded
confectionary items to furniture, caprets oil & soaps etc.
VIII. CONCLUSION
No doubt, the applicability of international rules
and regulation and model manual of prison administration
is a cumbersome task, but in order to standardize the
procedure and to provide the rights of the inmates lawful
and purpose fully, we may take the following measures:
1. Health Care Services: It would be essential for
the prison administration to employ or associate
better health care services for the prisoners, so as
to provide prompt and preventive action for better
care.
2. Vocational and Skill Development : Tihar jail
had been in news to start the VTI (Vocational
Training Institute) concept in the year 2012-13,
wherein, certain sill based courses such as
Automobile Operations & Repairing, Air
Conditioners repair and Maintenance, Welding,
Stitching, Carpentry etc were provided to the
inmates to focus on their employability after the
sentence. The course was in co-ordination with the
Ministry and on successful completion of course ,
the certificate is issued which is at par with the ITI
certificates of short duration courses. These types
of initiates may be taken up at a larger scale, and
possibly, more industries should be associated with
these tasks to make it more meaningful.
3. There is also a need to synchronise and facilitate
the staff of the prison. It is therefore essential to
have Establishment of Central Academy for
Correctional Administration, to eable the
proliferation of corrective and sustainable activities
across the prisons all over India.
4. MoUs with the industries and NGO for
rehabilitation of the prisoners and counselling for
betterment is also needed. Active participation of
Social Welfare department is needed.
5. Model Manual of Prison, as per BPR& D
guidelines, may be prepared and acted upon to
bring betterment in the administration as well the
inmates.
6. Special rehabilitation programmes may be
conducted with close co-ordination of Police,
Prison and the Court.
7. Life Cover to the Prisoners under Pradhan Mantri
Suraksha Bima Yojana Insurance Scheme may be
provided for further security of the family.
The rights of the inmates can only be addressed if we
are eager to provide the legal rights own by them with
prompt and fair display of our duties.

REFERENCES
[1] www.lexico.com
[2] Section 2(b) Prisoners (Attendence in Courts) Act,
1955.
[3] Prison Statistics India as on 31.12.2016,
(https://mha.gov.in/MHA1/Par2017/pdfs/par2018-pdfs/rs-
21032018/RS2944.pdf)
[4] AIR 1966 SC 424 (#1966 (1) SCR 702)
[5] AIR 1974 SC.
[6] www.unodc.org
[7] http://www.unodc.org
[8] https://mha.gov.in
[9] AIR 1978 SC 1675 (#1979 (1) SCR 392)
[10] bprd.nic.in
[11] AIR 1980 SC 1579 (#1980 (2) SCR
[12] Ramamurthy v. State of Karnataka, (1997) SCC.
(Cri) 386.
"Crime is the outcome of a diseased mind and jail must have an environment of hospital for treatment and care" - -
Mahatma Gandhi

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